Telephone technology has greatly affected the way in which people communicate and the way that business is conducted. People have become accustomed to being able to speak with someone across an ocean or across town by simply picking up the phone and dialing. One problem with traditional telephone technology is that it is tied to a single media type, namely voice. This can result in misunderstandings occurring over the telephone, since the only way the participants can communicate is with their voice. Often, especially in the business setting, telephone call participants may want to share information via a medium other than voice.
Video calls and conferencing has helped address this issue. A problem still remains in that if one of the participants is not using a videophone, then the availability of the video medium is meaningless. Also, a participant to a call may not realize that a second medium is desirable until after the call is already in progress. Once this realization is made the participant may have to ask all of the other participants to abort the current call and initiate a new call where each participant uses their respective video enabled phone. This is clearly an inconvenience to all call participants.
Some technologies have been developed with multi-media capabilities. Such technologies, like the video phone, require the user to determine a priori that more than one medium will be desired and they will therefore be using the specialized technology. Examples of such multi-media technologies that are currently available include a variety of Instant Messaging (IM) applications, WebEX™, Skype™, and MicroSoft Net Meeting™. None of the current solutions, however, provide a simple one-click spur-of-the-moment way to add multi-media support to a traditional in-progress telephone call.